


Upstairs

by Jillypups



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Bronnaery, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, Romance, Smut, bronn the bouncer, happy birthday one shot to my dearest Lu, hey guys did i mention smut, margaery the bartender, sandor the barback, sansa the bartender, sansan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 03:58:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4862222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jillypups/pseuds/Jillypups
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Okay, so, ahem.</p><p>Sansa Stark is the new owner of a bar in downtown Tucson, and she's hiring staff. At the start of it, she can only afford a bouncer/bar-back. In walks a big gruff guy named Sandor Clegane.</p><p>This is a birthday present to Little Imagination. I totally copied Bex's idea to write her some SanSan for her birthday, and when I brought up this idea of bar-owning Sansa and bouncer Sandor she loved it. Aaaaand, when I asked smut or no smut, well. </p><p>Well, let's just say the birthday girl gets what the birthday girl wants</p><p> Also I changed the fic name from Falling to Upstairs because um, well HAHAHAHA </p><p>OH GOD I AM SO SCARED. ANYWAYS HERE WE GO</p><p> </p><p>  <a href="http://jillypups.tumblr.com/post/129759836593/falling-for-vanillacoconuts">picset</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	Upstairs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vanillacoconuts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillacoconuts/gifts).



> Songs of inspiration:
> 
> "Strict Machine (We Are Glitter Mix)" - Goldfrapp
> 
> "Taste of Silver" - Until the Ribbon Breaks
> 
> "Naked" - X Ambassadors
> 
> "Lights On" - Big Grams

Then

The first time Sandor lays eyes on her she is a sharp, brittle fidget on a stool with her elbow resting on the bar, chin in her upturned palm as the fingers of that same hand twiddle a pencil against her cheek. The entire room is gauzed over in shadow, drapes drawn and lights off, and only the ceiling fans spin and laze overhead. He’s grateful for the deep dark of the room, because he gets enough flack for his scars from the actual job interviewers, and the last thing he really wants is to be rattled by high pitched gasps and averted gaze.

He slows his pace as he nears her, leaving a land of sunshine for the world of Little Bo Peep here, with her stack of papers and what looks like iced tea in a wine glass. She’s lost in thought, in a thicket of high piled auburn hair, in whatever she is reading; just plain lost in a big room with old cobwebs in the corners and an even older jukebox against the far wall. She doesn’t look up when he walks in, since Tucson’s spring season has yet to set itself to scorch, and the French doors are wide open to let in the last of the cool March breezes. She certainly doesn’t look like she belongs here, either, with her porcelain doll features. She is Sunday school perching on a vinyl barstool, an overgrown Girl Scout who wandered too far from the school yard, sitting there in a yellow sundress with a flip flop dangling from painted toes that wiggle in time to the music. She’s inside out and all wrong for a place like this.

 “Hey, pop tart,” he says flatly, loud enough to shake her out of whatever crossword puzzle she’s working on. “I’m here for the door job, if you wanna go tell your boss,” he says, taking his shades off as he steps into the cool dark of the bar, wooden floorboards a laid back relax under his boots.

He literally stops in his tracks when she lifts her gaze, because it’s that trick women do, when their eyes close before they open and pin you with daggers, and he feels the stab, blue enough to freeze even with the distance between them. She stares at him – no, stares him _down_ – and it’s an even, flat sound when she slaps her pencil against the bar and twists on her stool to face him fully. An eyebrow arches.

 _She’s all wrong for this place,_ he thought. Well, she proves him wrong the second she opens her mouth.

“ _I’m_ the boss. I’m the boss of me, of this bar, and if you can convince me in ten seconds why I shouldn’t kick you out of here, I’m _your_ boss, too.”

Sandor doesn’t take shit from anyone, not anymore. He can walk out the moment he wants to, and quite frankly with the angry look this chick is giving him, he should probably walk out now, but he’s never been interested in stepping back from a challenge. And oh, there’s a challenge here, in the flash of her temper and the done-up façade of her, and his fingers itch to undo her. He takes a longer, slower look around. It’s typical bar furniture, high tables and chairs to match, lower booths shoved in corners, but he has to appreciate that some of the things this woman has picked are actually vintage video game tables likely salvaged from old pizza parlors. He takes two steps closer, wondering if his ten seconds are up, and then he sees the sign up above, hanging over the tiered display of liquor bottles in the middle of the horseshoe shaped bar.

“Four and Twenty, is that what you’re going to call the place? What is this, Amsterdam?” he says, and he can’t help laughing, because there’s a reason they call Tucson Too-Stoned, but he would never in a million years take this girl for a pothead.

“Why does everyone keep _saying_ that,” she says, slapping the bar with an open hand. “Jesus, it’s Four _and_ Twenty, not 4:20 or anything,” and then she sighs. “Like, you know, four and twenty blackbirds, baked into a pie? God, it’s like nobody remembers that anymore.”

The crackle of her angry voice has thinned out and broken like simple syrup drizzled out thin on snow, and Sandor bows his head, trying to keep his mouth shut. He’s had plenty of dreams shattered by others. But still, it’s a stupid name.

“You’re going to put Four and Twenty over the address? Your storefront’s gonna read Four and Twenty 350?”

“Well, no, I’ll put the sign in the window. I’m getting a neon one made. Besides, I mean, it’s a from a nursery rhyme, and I like birds and the, and- oh shut up,” she snaps when he laughs. “If you’re here for an interview then you’re doing a really crappy job of it, just saying,” she says. “Besides, do I even have an application here for you?” she says, shuffling her papers with a downward glance. “Did you find me on the website like the others?”

“Yeah, it’s there. I’m Sandor,” he says, and she sifts and searches, fingers a bustle, papers a soft shuffle against whatever music is drowsing around in the background. He steps closer, bringing him within arm’s reach of her. She can sense it, clearly, because she pushes the stool in front of her with her foot so he can sit. Sandor inclines his head and stares down at it, waits for the other shoe to drop.

“Ah, gotcha. Okay, Sandor Clegane. You left off marketing specialist, I see, or advertising whatever,” she says with a valiant attempt at dry humor though there’s still hurt smarting in the tone of her voice, and he’s starting to regret putting it there. “So, aside from ill-advised advice and being a complete sexist pig, what else can you bring to the table?” she says, glancing up from his application to finally rest her eyes on his face.

And there is the other shoe.

He goes to the grocery store twice a week, the laundromat once, and he goes from job to job to job every few months. He’s no stranger to the deer in headlights look she’s giving him before her throat clears like a bug flew down there, and he’s no stranger to the way her fingers drift up to her left cheek like she’s making sure she’s still whole. His eyes drop so he can watch that little fingertip-travel across her cheekbone, down to her jaw and towards her mouth. It’s a nice path, soft and slow, no rough terrain there like on his face. She carefully lowers her gaze down to his application, and he watches the fingers of her other hand drag across his name.

“I’m- I’m sorry, you were saying,” she murmurs.

“Nice recovery,” he bites. “Why don’t you just come out and say it, or come out and scream, so we can get this over with?” and now he’s proved wrong all over again.

“Oh yeah?” she says, sliding off the stool with two slaps of flip-flops to the floor, and she’s only the slightest flick of gaze from one of his cheeks to the other as she glares up at him. “You come into _my_ business calling me a- a _pop tart_ and you think my honest reaction is any worse that that crap? I was surprised to see those there,” she says with a nervous flitty wave towards his face, “but _you_ were standing around here for a long time, seeing it was just _me_ here, and I know you doubted I owned the place. So how the _hell_ does your snap judgment hold better against my own?”

He stares at her, and she takes his fluster of silence as a victory, and she nods, cheeks flushed with anger. _Jesus, she’s gorgeous._

“Yeah, how about that? You’re standing there being so, you know, _sexist,_ and I’m sitting here, and just because I was—”

“What, huh? You were what? Another ‘Oh jeez, did you see that guy’s face?’ Join the fucking club, honey, because you people are all _over_ the place,” he says with a sneer, and he registers the gasp and look of shock, is about to flip her the bird but decides better of it when he simply spins on his heel to walk the fuck out of here.

“Wait!” she finally says when he’s out on the sidewalk, and he can hear the flip-flap of her feet when she runs towards him.

“What,” he says, expecting another flustered apology that’s only meant to make the offending person feel better instead of him. Sandor turns around, drags his loose hair back and off his shoulders, holding in it a pony tail before he tosses it back. _Have ‘em all, sweetheart. Eat your fucking heart out,_ he thinks, waiting for a tittered _Oh I’m so sorry_ or _Can we please just start over._

She clenches her jaw and looks up at him, and maybe there’s fear there but there’s other stuff too, things he’s been envious about most of his life, things like dignity and pride. She sniffs and tips her head back towards the bar. Ice Queen is back, sewed into place though he knows the nervous of her now, has heard the tremble of self-doubt and seen the fidget of fear.

“Can you lift a keg without help?” she asks as she straightens her head, folding her arm across her ribs, a freckled rest for her breasts where they’re all propped up as she cocks out a hip and tries on haughty for an outfit.

_Don’t look down, don’t look down, don’t look down._

“What?” he says, because he’s angry and distracted and both of those are all tied up together now. _Why does she have to be so fucking pretty?_

“I said, can you lift a keg by yourself? Nobody else could, and you um, you look strong enough for it. I can’t afford a door guy _and_ a bar back right now, so I need someone who can do both. And so far nobody’s been able to lift one alone,” she says.

She’s haughty, proud, chewed lower lip, foot that can’t stop tapping. Want and need and desperation, claws dug in but holding on to nothing, maybe. There’s a tug inside him, because he’s always had a soft spot for strays, because he’s always been one. He opens his mouth, hesitating on which way to go, the kind way or the rude way, but then he closes it because he still can’t tell what he wants. Just then two high school kids come rolling down the sidewalk on their skateboards, a rattle-drag that he’s gotten so used to he doesn’t even hear it anymore, down here on 4th Avenue. But it’s clear this woman isn’t prepared, with the way she gasps and startles, with the way they come barreling towards her.

Without thinking Sandor picks her up by the waist, an easy enough task, and he takes her from his left to his right, as easy as moving a piece on a chessboard. _Check._ She does that girlish high pitched _Eeee_ in the back of her throat, grasps his wrists as he swings her out of harm’s way – _what harm, really,_ he thinks, _but who cares_ –and then they’re standing there on the corner of 4 th and 7th with his hands on her hips and hers on his arms.

 “Yeah, I can lift a keg,” he says. “But a man likes knowing the name of his boss,” he says, and it’s a slow, sad, painful drop of his hands from her waist. Her dress feels like it’s made of out the blankets he used to have when he was a kid. Comfort. Familiarity. Softness. Things he hasn’t been acquainted with in a long, long time.

She smiles, and as his hands leave her so do hers leave him, the sad parting after some strange dance number here on a lazy Tuesday street corner, here where the dazzle of the sun puts stars in his eyes and makes him squint as he gazes at her.

“The name is ‘boss,’ honey. Don’t you forget it,” she says, turning with that sweet smile cast over her shoulder at him. “We open in two weeks but I need help moving stuff, so I’ll see you tomorrow,” and Sandor is left to watch the saunter of her as she walks back into Four and Twenty, disappearing into the shadow like a fox into her den.

 _Checkmate_.

 

Now

 

“You gotta speak up, sweetheart, when a band’s playing right behind you,” Sansa shouts, leaning to the side of the tap as she pours a Hefeweizen into a tilted pint glass.

“I _said,_ you got a boyfriend?” asks the blond guy with the perfectly mussed hair, leaning over his folded arms to get as close to her as he can.

 It’s 11pm on a Saturday night, two hours into the live music with one to go, and though it brings in the crowds so tightly it’s like a can of sardines in here, she’ll be happy to watch them pack up. She never thought she’d be the type to get irritated with live music, to start hearing it as just noise, but now she carries ear plugs in her pockets, now she can hardly handle anything louder than acoustic guitar on her nights off.

“Nope, and I don’t need one, either,” she grins, dropping a slice of orange in the glass when it’s full of wheat beer, and she nods when the woman she hands it to passes a five dollar bill, and Sansa memorizes _One dollar for the jar_ before stuffing the money in her apron.

“Well then what do you when you’re lonely?” he hollers back, ignoring the elbows his buddies dig into his sides at his persistence.

“She’s got these, just like the rest of us,” Margaery says as she slides a wedge of lime on the rim of the glass with the other, and when she’s done she lifts her hand and wiggles her fingers suggestively in the air. “That’ll be three bucks, lonely boy,” she shouts, sliding the blond guy his vodka tonic. “And next time try to use your imagination,” she says with a grin.

“He’s going to turn out to be a shitty tipper with a lecture like that,” Sansa says with a laugh as she takes orders for shots, as she pulls out two PBR’s from below bar and opens them simultaneously.

“Or a good one if I let him think I’m going to teach him a thing or two,” Margaery says, nodding and pointing at someone down the bar. “Whatcha need, sugar?”

It’s a good crowd tonight, despite the chilly whippy-wind weather outside, or maybe because of it. Nothing like holing up in a warm bar during a January cold snap, but then that reminds her.

“Crap. Hey, get Bronn to cover for me real fast, I forgot to wrap the pipes outside,” she says, nodding to the guy at the door checking I.D.s. “If I don’t do it now I’m going to forget,” she says, turning on her heel and running smack dab into Sandor’s chest. It’s a good strong collision, enough to stun her, and she stays here up against the brick of him as she collects herself.

“Whoa, boss,” he says, catching her by the shoulders when she eventually staggers back, rubbing her nose with one hand while she balances herself with the other palm to his pectoral. It’s firm, smooth muscle, but still a lot softer than his sternum she collided with. She resists the urge to squeeze it.

“Sorry,” she says with an embarrassed laugh, and she closes her eyes when she hears him chuckle.

“Not as sorry as I am. That’s going to leave a mark, I bet,” he says. “Big boss always beating up her employees.”

“Ha, ha,” she says with a roll of her eyes.

Sansa ducks her head for a moment of self-recovery, and she bites her lip as she gazes down at their feet, at her beer stained Converses and his scuffed up work boots, at how close he stands to her. That’s when she realizes her fingers are busy toying with the fabric of his shirt and that he’s still holding her shoulders, large hands two light cups against her bare skin. It might be cold enough for snow outside but it’s hot behind the bar. It’s _piping_ here between them all of a sudden, here where she’s suddenly breathless as she slowly lifts her eyes from their feet.

 _I don’t need a boyfriend,_ she reminds herself, but once again she’s wondering what’s under his clothes, how far those tattoos go up under his sleeves, what it would feel like if he lifted her up again like he did the day they met. _Down, Sansa. Down, girl,_ she thinks, and now she has to fan herself with her free hand.

“What’s up, what do you need?” he says, bowing his head down to hear her better, and she tilts her face up at the same time like they are two magnets here between a row of strangers and a wall of liquor bottles, here where it’s too snug for them to pass each other without a hip-close step around. _A boyfriend, maybe. You, maybe._

“I have to go wrap the pipes before I forget,” she says of the two elbow bends of old pipe, the only two that are exposed on the outside wall of the men’s and women’s bathrooms.

Sandor shakes his head with a frown, looking at her like she’s crazy.

“Let me do it. You’re the boss, I’m the bar back,” he says. “I can do more than clean glasses and take out the trash, you know.”

“The only towels big- I mean um, thick enough are a couple of old beach towels though, and they’re upstairs,” she says, glancing up where her apartment is overhead. When she looks back at she sees his gaze followed hers, and she has the long stretch of his scruffy throat to stare at until he drops his head back down so they can speak normally.

“Ah,” he says, hands sliding off her arms like melted wax dripping down a candle, and despite the warmth of his palms on her flushed skin, she shivers. “I’ll cover the door for Bronn then, he can still make drinks when he gets his head out of his ass,” he says of the guy she hired to be a bartender before finding out his girlfriend Margie was much better at it.

There is a slight gap widening between them when he moves away from her, straightening to his full height, but then Sansa shakes her head, steps with him to keep her hand there on his chest. It’s a dance they’ve slowly learned together over the past eleven months, a slow circle that tightens with each revolution, each revelation. _He likes dogs and adopted two strays. He’s a quiet guy but has a quick wit. He’s an orphan with a chip on his shoulder._

“No, you know what, I’m being stupid,” she says, brushing away loose strands of hair that have fallen from the tousled topknot on her head. “You know where the door is, here,” she says, leaning to the side to get her keys from where they hang under the register on the island behind the bar.  “The towels are in the cupboard under the kitchen sink,” she says.

“Got it,” he says, opening his hand to receive the drop of her house keys. “Besides, you’d freeze your little ass off out there in that thing,” he says, plucking the spaghetti strap of her tank top, making her grin. _Jesus, my hand is still on his chest,_ she realizes with a giddy sort of jolt.

“Thanks Sandor,” she says, and he nods as his hand rises, presumably to wrap around her wrist and free himself from her snare, and she’s almost got the touch of him, here where probably everyone is staring though she can’t bring herself to care, but then--

“Hey, Red! I thought you didn’t have a boyfriend,” that obnoxiously familiar voice shouts from behind her. She glances back to the see the frat boy lift his hands in a shrug. “What gives, honey?”

“This fucking idiot,” Sandor mutters, lifting his eyes from her to the bar behind her. “He’s been giving you grief all night.”

She knows his eyes are grey but right now they look black in the low glow from Christmas lights overhead and blue light candles that dot every surface in the bar. It’s a predatory look, one she’s grown to adore if she ever forced herself to admit it, and it makes her grin even as she rolls her eyes. She lets her hand slide across his chest and then finally off of him as she turns to face her inquisitor with her arms akimbo.

“Want me to kick him out?” Sandor low-hum rumbles behind her.

“Nah, I can handle it,” she says, turning her cheek to find he’s stooped over her, has lowered his head to talk close to her ear, and she wonders if it’s because he doesn’t like to speak up or if it’s because he knows how she feels about loud noises these days. Whatever the reason, he’s _close_ , and she can’t help but bite into the grin that just won’t disappear to have him down here where it feels like they’re slow dancing.  “Remember, towels under the kitchen sink. And sorry if it’s a mess, I slept in too late to clean this afternoon.”

“I’ll keep my eyes glued to the floor, I swear,” he teases, and she laughs.

“Yeah, but that’s where the mess’ll be,” she says, pushing her shoulder blades against his chest in a _Go on, now_ nudge before she heads back to her post at the front of the bar.

“Got Sandor to do it, huh,” Margaery says as she closes out a tab on the credit card machine, tapping a pen against its plastic shell as she pops a piece of gum in her mouth.

“Yeah, he’s good like that,” she says, nodding when she makes eye contact with a brunette with bangs and vintage cat eye frames.

“Could I get a Moscow mule?” she says, and Sansa nods, spinning on her heel for the vodka behind her.

“I’ll bet he’s better than you give him credit for,” Margie says slyly. “So, you’re just going to send him up to your apartment, huh? I’ve been to your place, Sanny, there are probably panties hanging to dry on some random surface. You know how to run a business, babe, but you sure can’t clean a house,” Margaery says, and when Sansa feels her face burn bright red, her employee and best friend throws back her head and laughs so hard she spills diet coke all over their shoes.

“Yeah, well, I can’t cook either, but who’s counting,” she says, adding lime to the vodka and ginger beer before handing the woman her cocktail.

She tries to keep her mind on the customers and the money, eyes trained on the clock to count down to when the music will stop and the noise will fade, and she smiles just as brightly as before when she takes orders and pours drinks. But she still can’t quite shake the idea of Sandor walking through her apartment, his heavy tread falling silent on the scatter of old thrift store rugs. A big beast in her girl’s lair, in a world of crocheted blankets draped on overstuffed sofas, of windows covered with hanging scarves and shawls instead of curtains, of bundles of creosote hanging in the bathroom so shower steam will smell like rain. She sees him as a dark slash of long hair and smolder, tattoos and jeans and black shirt. She sees him on the prowl up there where, she remembers suddenly with slosh of spilled beer, there are indeed a couple of bras hanging over her kitchen sink to dry in the south-facing window.

Sansa lets loose a sudden burst of a giggle, thinking of phrases like _C’est la vie_ and _que sera sera,_ because while it’s hard for her to admit how much she loves those dark looks of his, it’s even harder for her to admit she _likes_ the idea of him up there in her world. Sansa gets another shiver as she imagines him staring at her bras, all lace without much fabric to get between him and the window pane, but she feels a deep thrum when she imagines him reaching out to brush one with a fingertip. _I hope he does._

 

The door to her apartment is one he well knows, one he passes by whenever he opens the storeroom behind the tall shelves of liquor bottles and runs downstairs to the basement to check kegs or to replace them. It stands sentinel there on the landing behind a single bulb and its chain that he’s always knocking his head into, and Sandor pauses a moment with the key in the lock before he sucks in a breath and turns his hand. He hears a click and thinks _Here goes nothin’_ , and he opens the door to a flight of stairs that takes two bends before he’s walking up into Sansa’s apartment.

It’s a mess of woman everywhere, books and papers and pens on the coffee table between bottles of nail polish and tea cups, but overall it’s a nice apartment, original floorboards like the bar below though these are covered haphazard with overlapping area rugs of various pattern and style. Floor lamps flank her two sofas like they’re posting guard, and there is plenty of art on the exposed brick walls, but, he is somewhat impressed to find, no television. _She probably doesn’t have time for it,_ he thinks, taking a step that creaks underfoot, and he freezes like a burglar before he registers the bump of music and dull rumble of conversation from below. _Idiot,_ he thinks with a shake of his head, raking his hair out of his eyes as he briskly crosses the open floor, past the sofas and coffee table towards the kitchen at the back of the apartment. To the right is a small dining area with a round table and more papers; less a dining table and more a desk, he figures, if the open laptop has anything to say about it.

“So this is your world, little bird,” he says, she of the blackbirds, she with the little sparrow tattooed on the inside of her wrist, she who hums to music that isn’t playing whenever the bar is closed and everyone’s cleaning under the bright glare of the overhead lights. “And there is her nest,” he murmurs, gazing to the left at the quilt-piled bed against a low row of bookshelves and the wall of windows above it. Just the sight of it, the idea of it and what he would do to her in it is enough to make him hard, and he has to squeeze his eyes shut, shake his head as he turns back to the task at hand.

The kitchen is little more than a layer of vinyl tile on top of the wood floors and a long row of counter and cabinets against the wall, a stove and small vintage fridge that’s the color of a robin’s egg. There are a few dishes on the sink and a skillet and kettle on the stove, but that’s not why he sucks in a breath and stops dead in his tracks.

Two lace bras against downtown lights hang in the window over the sink, one a pale color that’s too soft to even have a name, the other a shade probably found under the sea somewhere warm and tropical. He is all alone but still he glances around the room over his shoulder, stares a moment at the open stairs, but then he turns around to face her lingerie with a hand outstretched towards them. There is a line to cross, here, and he’s almost as repelled by it as he’s drawn to it, because he’s never been accused or guilty of being a pervert. But they are so flimsy, so lightweight and effortless that he has to wonder how they can hold anything up, let alone her breasts.

“Jesus Christ,” he groans, dropping his hand and letting loose the air in his lungs. He shakes his head, fleetingly wonders if he’s man enough for this task, but then a dark thought drifts up like smoke inside him. Thick smoke, rich and heady, bad wolf thoughts as he stands in a fertile pasture.

 _I could be man enough for her,_ because he catches her watching him haul kegs downstairs without help, catches her gazing at him as he replaces lights on the tall ladder high above her when she’s supposed to be paying bills. Because the feel of her hand on him is branded there still, that hot-cold smear of her fingers across his chest when she turned away. _Just not a man good enough,_ he thinks as he squats down in front of the sink, opening the doors to find these towels of hers, because she’s still a closed off lonely little thing, fragile despite the way she can chew out drunks or manipulate her way into paying less for liquor purchased in bulk.

He’s glimpsed the hot and heavy need of her, the way all women are when they’re hungry for something, and it’s those little looks that help send him off to sleep at night after a few desperate strokes. But he’s also caught a glance or two of the way she fights fear when an unexpected bill comes, or the time she burst into tears after she finally returned her mother’s phone call in the alley between garbage cans. He’s a big brute of a man; he doesn’t know how to hold spun sugar, how to care for cut crystal though the devil knows he wishes he did. Instead he opts to lurk and watch, to do his job as best he can to make her happy. Sandor sighs and closes the cabinet, stands and stares at those damnable bras before turning on his heel and walking away.

The sound of Saturday night is a slow steady swell as he jogs downstairs, beach towels tucked under his arm, and when he finally opens the door to the landing in the storeroom, it’s like being hit upside the head with a frying pan, the noise is so loud. He wonders how she sleeps on her nights off, but judging by all the paperwork everywhere, maybe she just doesn’t.

Night air is a cold, stinging slap on his face and through his shirt, and he snorts as he wraps the pipes out back in the alley, imagining Sansa in her daily uniform of sleeveless top and cutoff shorts doing this when it’s almost freezing out. Long legs and a bend at the waist, the curve of a hamstring and the lace of a pale, pale bra, the slow slide of red hair off her back as it swings forward to hide her face. He’d brush it back, hold it in place at the nape of her neck as he pulled her up and—

“Hey man, can we get in this way?” someone says, and he startles out of his daydream, leaping to his feet and adjusting himself swiftly before turning around to look at the couple dressed in black and shivering by the back door. “The line is like ten deep out front and it’s fuckin’ freezing out here,” he says, wrapping his arm around his skinny girlfriend.

 _It feels hotter than hell to me,_ he thinks, shaking his head as he dusts his hands off on his jeans and pushes past them.

“It’s either the front door or fuck off,” he says, letting the heavy door close behind him with the click of an automatic lock.

A glance to his phone tells him the honkytonk raucous will be over in forty minutes or so, and he’s about to go ask Bronn to switch him so he can get a little more peace and quiet outside, but as he passes the bar he sees the blond guy, Mr. Loudmouth, reach out and grab Sansa by the wrist after she hands him another drink.

It’s like the striking of a match inside him, and Sandor clenches his jaws, squeezes two fists together as he stops in the midst of the crowd, easily a head above everyone as he watches it play out. She tilts her head sharply to the side, and despite her buttered on smile he recognizes the viper strike of her body language, and he knows she is angry. He counts to ten, and then he slinks closer. He is taller than everyone,  but the regulars are used to him slipping through and sliding past after working here for nearly a year.

“You’ve got a choice, buster, you either let go of my arm or you get kicked out. I don’t like to cut off my customers, but I’m not a piece of meat, either,” Sansa shouts over the bar, over the noise, over her temper.

“How about _you_ make a choice, Red, and either give me a kiss or give me your number. You say you don’t need a boyfriend but that doesn’t mean you don’t a need a good, hard fu—”

“She told you to take your hand off her, so do it,” Sandor says, clamping a palm down on the guy’s shoulder. “You don’t even have a choice now anymore. It’s a fucking order,” he says, lifting his gaze to Sansa. He flicks his eyebrows up in a question.

 _Thank you,_ she mouths with the widening and rolling of her eyes, and she turns to say something in Margie’s ear.

“Get your fucking hands off me, asshole, telling _me_ that’s an order,” the guy says, trying and failing to yank away from Sandor’s grip as he turns around. “Do you have any idea who I, aw, shit, it’s _you_ ,” the shorter man says as he turns around to give his captor a dirty look, but has only the center of Sandor’s mass to stare at.

“My eyes are up here, _asshole,_ ” he says, grinning when Mr. Loudmouth slowly lifts his gaze. “Time to put the drink down. You’re done,” he says, and it’s like dragging a bad puppy by the collar, the guy is so easy to yank off his stool.

“Sandor, wait,” Sansa says, voice a drown-out as the musician behind the mic blows into his harmonica.

“What the fuck’s the matter with you, I was just having a conversation, Jesus,” the guy says when Sandor hauls him through the crowd and their jeers and right out the front door.

“Taking out the trash I see,” Bronn says around a toothpick as he shines a flashlight down on an out of state license. “Nice try, kid,” he says, handing it back to an affronted look girl who can’t be older than 18.

“Sure am,” Sandor says, giving college boy a shove when the small cluster of people at the door scatters like bowling pins to make way.

“Oh shut up, that stupid bitch was asking for it, with her cutesy little pet names and the eyes she kept giving me,” says the guy when Bronn laughs at him. He fastens his sneer on Sandor. “What, so you think she’s gonna suck _your_ dick instead, Scarface? Huh, is that it? I bet it is, with the way you were—”

But he’s run out of time trying to explain, because that’s when Sandor snarls for him to shut the fuck up, and that’s when he takes two quick steps forward and punches the guy so hard he falls back on his ass. Sandor’s knuckles feel like fireworks.

There is a small clog of college guys at the door, jostling against Bronn’s shoulder and Sandor’s back when they spill out onto the sidewalk, and the brisk winter air is full of _What the fuck_ and _Jesus Christ what did you do him,_ and Sandor lets them swarm as he shakes the pain out of his hand, glaring at the little shit while his friends rush over to haul him up off the pavement.

“I think that makes you 86’d,” Bronn says dryly as he waves over another person with his flashlight. “Same with your shit friends.”

“I’m gonna send the cops after your sorry ass,” college boy says when he’s back on his feet, when he spits pink stained streaks onto the sidewalk at Sandor’s feet.

“Then I’ll tell them you physically attacked Four and Twenty’s owner, jackass. I got a witness says I didn’t do anything, but says _you_ did,” he says, jerking his head to Bronn who grins and nods. “So come at me, motherfucker, I could do this all night long,” he says, cracking his knuckles, ignoring the flare of pain as he glares at the little cluster of idiots.

College boy’s friends all take a collective step backwards, and Bronn laughs.

“Wait, you attacked _Sansa_?” says girl with an Australian accent, hand outstretched as she waits for Bronn to hand back her passport. “She’s like the most laid back person working on the Avenue, you bloody prick. Fuck it, _I’ll_ say this bloke didn’t hit you if that’s the kind of fuck boy you are,” she says, and her thicket of girls all give him death stares as they push past Bronn to the warmth of the bar.

“So will I,” says a girl with glasses and a nose ring, and the six or so others out here all nod their assent from behind Sandor, and he grins darkly as the blond shakes his head in swollen-mouthed disbelief.

“Fuck this shithole,” he says. He spits on the sidewalk again and flips Sandor the bird before his friend’s bro-hug him and shout halfhearted insults as they walk down towards the shinier, glossier college bars.

“Good riddance. Good punch, too, man, couldn’t have done it better myself,” Bronn says. “Though if he comes back I’ll get my shot, I guess,” he says, laughing when a guy says _My hero_ and clings to his arm.

Sandor can’t help but grin as he glances down at his red, skinned-up knuckles, and he tries shaking off the sting again as he threads his way back through the crowd. He lifts his gaze, eager to find her, to see if she’s okay and to let her know it’s taken care of, but once more he stops mid-stride, because she’s giving him a look so scathing it reminds him of when they first met.

 _What’s up,_ he mouths, and something in him sinks when he sees her angrily shake her head and turn away from him. He realizes it was inexplicable hope, there in the black crannies of his heart. It’s plain as day, it’s a shutdown and push away, and she doesn’t speak to him for the rest of the night.

 

Sansa is so angry she could spit nails, and it takes everything she has not to snap at every customer, not to spill liquor or drop change, though she does spend more than her usual energy throwing empty bottles in the recycling, and soon they’re all shattering against one another. _How dare he,_ she thinks over and over again, wondering how many customers she’s lost with his brash and foolhardy behavior.

It’s a blur of well liquor and cheap beer, splash and wipe down on the bar, the same old songs on the jukebox, the rowdy wind up that leads to last call and the high energy hunt for after-parties. The band finish their set and pack up, last call comes and goes, the lights are flicked on and the doors are locked, and the four of them clear glasses and bottles and sweep floors in silence. Or rather, she and Sandor do so in silence while Margie and Bronn bicker and flirt and argue and laugh until their duties are done.

“You guys wanna come over for a drink or some pizza or anything?” Margie says as Bronn helps her into her coat. Bronn shakes his head no from behind her and makes a bawdy thrusting motion, and Sansa rolls her eyes.

“No, you guys go on and have fun. I’ll see you on Tuesday,” she says, tossing another empty Bud Light into the recycling, and when she glances over at Sandor she catches the cringe he makes at the clatter. _Good,_ she thinks with a sneer.

But then there’s the way he stalked over to that idiot, two dangerous steps before he struck out like one of those professional fighter guys. She wonders what other activities that strength of his snakes through, and suddenly she’s blushing as she thinks of hips thrusting, of forearms flexing. _I’ve just got my blood up, that’s all,_ she thinks, shaking it off as Margie says good night and Bronn says he’ll smell them later.

“Are going to tell me what the _fuck_ is the matter with you?” Sandor says after he locks the door behind them, turning around to lock a crackling hot look of lost temper on her.

She nearly jumps from the startle of it but recovers quickly enough, and she messes up the neat row of tucked in bar stools he was making by shoving one out into the center of the room. Sansa puts a hand on her hip as she stalks towards him with a finger raised and aimed at his face. His undone hair makes him look all the wilder, and she’d be scared of him if she didn’t know him so well by now.

“Excuse me? You think you have a right to yell at _me_ right now, when you kick out and beat up my customer?” she says, jabbing her finger towards the sidewalk window. “You completely overreacted out there, and that’s _not_ okay.”

“Oh, _I’m_ the one who overreacted? You’re the one having a fucking hissy fit right now, mad at me for doing my _goddamned job._ ”

Sansa sucks in a breath, infuriated at him and his choice of words.

“I am _not_ having a hissy fit, I am justifiably angry at you for completely losing your cool out there,” she says.

“I didn’t lose jack shit, all right, I was just doing my job, _boss,_ ” he spits out with a heavy dose of sarcasm that makes her raise her eyebrows and scoff. “He was being a dickhead, he deserved to be kicked out. Any other bar downtown would have knocked his ass to the curb in a heartbeat,” he says.  

“Yeah well this isn’t any other bar downtown, Sandor, this is _my_ bar. I’ve been open less than a year, all right?” she says, trying for a hearty shout. Her voice breaks, and to distract them both from that girlish hitch she snatches a damp dish towel off the corner of the bar and flings it at him, and she grunts with anger in the back of her throat when he catches it easily.

“Yeah, and it’s already one of the more popular ones,” he says, tossing the towel to a nearby table. Sandor takes a step towards her. “I don’t know why you’re freaking out right now.”

Sansa turns away from him with the heels of her hands pressed to her eyes. _I am not going to cry, I am not going to cry,_ she thinks as the tears come anyways, and she wonders why angry tears have to sting so much more than the sad ones. She wipes them away, mad at herself, and spins around to face him.

“I’m ‘freaking out’ because I spent over _ten years_ saving up the money for a liquor license and my own business. Once upon a time, my family lost _everything_ and I had to leave _school_ , I had to leave everything behind, but I still made it on my own, and I’m definitely not going to be able to keep it if we’re kicking people out and beating them up. Okay? So stuff that in your little ‘freak out,’ _Sandor,_ ” she says, stalking up to him and shoving him in the chest.

He is the slightest of steps back, a giant against a flea, but he is quick enough to snare her, covering and pinning her hands with his own, and the movement makes her trip and stagger against him. He holds her against his chest, takes a step forward, back into that old dance of theirs. Sandor shakes his head with a frown, mouth downturned there in the black of his beard.

“Hey, I didn’t- I’m sorry, I didn’t think of it like that,” he says, but she’s beyond pissed off, and the tears in her eyes make her feel weak, make her feel the failure even with a full cash register at the end of most nights.

“No shit, Sherlock. Now get your hands off me,” she snaps, blinking away tears and going for full on rage instead of something tinged with doubt and fear and insecurity. She braces her legs and flexes, tries to tug her hands out from under the vise of his, but he is immovable.

“You get _your_ hands off _me,_ ” he retorts, brushing her away like she’s crumbs, and now she’s a stumble when he let her go so easily, and something about it hurts, stings like the tears in her eyes.

“Ugh, you drive me _crazy,_ ” she says angrily, wiping the back of her hand against her lash line, spinning on the squeaky rubber of her Converse as she stalks off away from him. “Why, huh? Why did you have to pull that shit?” she says, turning back a few feet away to glare at him. Sandor growls with frustration and shakes his hands towards her like he’s throttling someone.

“He _grabbed_ you, all right? He was disrespecting you. If you’d have heard the shit he was saying outside you would have kicked him in the nuts,” Sandor says, a caged tiger at the zoo as he paces to and fro, dragging his hair back the way he does when he frustrated.

“Yeah, well, that’s my call to make, okay, not yours. I don’t know why you thought you had any right to do that, I even told you I could handle it.”

“You said _thank you_ when I grabbed him,” he says, taking a step towards her, pointed index finger aimed her way, and now he’s as angry as she is. “You mouthed _thank you_ and that was all I needed to hear out of you, all right? I made a call and I know it was the right one.”

“It’s _my_ call, goddammit! I own this place, so it is _my_ call,” she snaps with an angry shake of her head. _Ten long, hard years to get my hands on something that’s mine, and he thinks he can just waltz in here_. “Why the _fuck_ you thought you had to do that, I’ll never know,” she says, and she jumps when he beats a fist on top of a table, and it’s hard enough that the surrounding chairs rattle.

“Because I’m in _love_ with you, Sansa,” he shouts, hands gripping the hair on the sides of his head before he flings out his arms as he walks towards her, a great big storm of a man, and now she falters, she is so taken aback by his words. His face contorts and not from the scars but from emotion and confliction, from all the pent up things that rocket out of him now. Her eyes widen, but he doesn’t come any closer. “I’m in love with you and I have _no_ idea what to do with it, all right? Are you happy now? Huh? Are you fucking happy?”

He stands a few feet away from her, chest heaving from the confession, eyes two stone flints that flash as he glares at her. It is as if he has accused her of a crime instead of declared his feelings for her, but perhaps they’re the same thing to a man like Sandor. She can feel her heart beat, though not in her chest. It’s a wild rush in her skull, a loud pound in her ears as if it’s standing on the stage screaming into the microphone. And it’s a hot pulse between her legs as his words fall around her, heavy like stones, feather light like snowflakes. _He loves me,_ she thinks with a throb as she stares at him, at the angry animal and the desperate man, at how fine a creature they make when they’re all fused up like they are right now. Sansa aches, suddenly, from unanswered questions. Sansa aches, and she cannot find her breath.

“So what are you going to do about it,” she says to his mouth, trying for goading, managing only a whisper.

“Fuck you, Sansa,” he murmurs, and to someone else it could almost be taken as an insult.

But _she_ has the hot look in his eyes to bathe in, the barely contained snarl of him when he takes two long, strong strides towards her. It only takes a stoop and his hands to her ass before she’s hauled up in his arms, hefted onto his forearms as he turns and walks her across the room, and once she’s stuck between the brick of him and the brick of the wall, Sandor kisses her. It’s hard and angry and delicious, and she fights back with the wrap of her thighs around him, squeezing him so tight he grunts. She is pinned like a butterfly to the wall with the hard shove of his hips into hers, and she holds him tight with her legs when he moves his arms from beneath her thighs.

“Take it down,” he says, pulling the clip out of her hair so it tumbles to her shoulders, and he is about to bury his fingers in it when she moves. “Oh, no you don’t,” he snarls when she tries to claw his shoulders, and she moans when he grabs her hands and lifts them, pressing them against the wall high above her head.

“Yes,” she pants into his mouth when he kisses her again, and he is push and take and grab and need, his tongue a thrust and his teeth a nip, his beard a scrub and his chest a burden to her ability to take a full breath, but she’d just waste it anyways, gasping his name. “Fuck me, Sandor. Oh god, fuck me,” she says, because it’s been forever and she’s been licking her lips at the thought of him for months now, because if this is love from Sandor then she cannot _wait_ to see what it’s like when they’re naked.

It’s not a word, just a low scratched sound in the back of his throat at her words, all gruff grunt and hunger, and when he finally lets her hands go to prop her up again, she uses the leverage to tilts her hips against him, to rub herself against his hard cock. She gets her way now as she wraps her arms around his shoulders so she can dig her nails into him. _Try and shake me off now,_ she thinks. _I’m not going anywhere._

“Fuck,” Sandor says, grinding his hips against her once more until she hisses from the scratch of brick on her exposed skin, and though he’s kissing her like he wants to hurt her, that single noise makes him back away from the wall.

“You can do it harder than that, can’t you,” she whispers as she drags her fingers through his hair, drawing it away so she can say it right into his ear, and the hum in his throat is the closest thing to a growl she’s ever heard out of a man.

“You have no idea,” he says, kneading his fingers into the flesh of her ass as he stalks down the length of the bar, and she squirms against him, a writhe and wriggle designed to drive him crazy when she realizes he’s taking her upstairs.

She can hardly contain herself when he has to set her back to her feet so he can unlock her door, can’t help but grin when she realizes he’s had her keys in his pocket all night, and the fleeting fantasy of him sneaking up into her apartment while she sleeps has her so turned on she can’t be still.

“Come and get it,” she says when the door unlocks, and she kicks it open before squeezing through the narrow opening, his grasping hand a four fingered snag on the hem of her shirt before she’s out of reach.

Sansa shrieks when she hears the pound of his footsteps behind her, and she tries taking the stairs by twos but he’s already got her with an arm wrapped around her waist. She’s half scared the drag of her weight against him will send them both falling down the stairs, but she forgets him in the haze of her want, forgets the strength and wall of him.

“I could fuck you right here,” he says against her neck as he bows his body over hers, thrusting his erection against her ass, making a moan ride high and dry right out of her throat. “Would you like that, Sansa?” and she squeezes herself between the thighs when his other hand undoes the button and zipper of her shorts. “Tell me, little bird, how do I make you sing?”

“Oh god,” she whines when he slides his fingers between her belly and panties, down and down, then in and up, and she feels speared through and captured like prey here between his hard cock and the dip of his fingers. _Little bird,_ she thinks, mind numbed up from the rub of his thumb now, because she’s never heard him call her anything but boss, except the two times tonight he’s called her Sansa. _I’m in love with you, Sansa. Would you like that, Sansa. Yes, yes, yes,_ she thinks to both.

“Is that it, hmm?” he asks, hand moving faster, pressing firm and then light so she can never settle down, so that it all just builds up, each press of his fingers stacking one on top of the other, each slip and slide working her over until she’s not even really standing on her own two feet anymore. Sansa has her hands braced against the walls on either side of the stairs as she pushes back against him, as she leans over his arm across her ribs, as he bends with her to reach higher, to dig deeper, to make her—

“Oh god, yes, yes, please, Sandor, please don’t stop,” she cries out, shrill and high, the whine of a wild animal in a snare, her nails dragging against the plaster as she lifts up on her toes. Sansa comes around his fingers with a series of pulses, and now Sandor grits out a groan as he works her, works her, works her.

“I've only just begun, little girl,” he says, kissing her bare shoulder before he bites her, a soft, slow sink of his teeth as his thumb moves once more before he draws his fingers out of her. He plucks the elastic of her panties like it’s a guitar string, and despite the orgasm she’s just had she feels as tightly strung as one.

“Oh, god,” she says, because that’s all she can say now, because words have left her, fallen out of her to scatter like pearls sliding off a string, and now his hands are sliding _up,_ under her top to the underswell of her breasts.

“Aren’t you going to show me in, Sansa? Aren’t you going to show me around,” he says, all low rough coaxing vowels, all spread and pull between his words, and it reminds her of what he’s just done to her, and now she’s so wet she can’t think straight.

“I can’t walk right now because of you,” she murmurs when she slowly straightens and turns in the tight space between his arm and his chest. “So you’re going to have to make me.”

“My pleasure,” he grunts, his hand sliding down the low of her back to under her ass, and she has only to hitch a leg up over his hip before he’s got her more or less off the ground, half straddling his thigh as he bumps her up, one stair at a time, grabbing the wall for balance with the hand that was just inside her. Each fall of his foot makes her bounce and rub against him, and she’s already sensitive as it is, but now, _Now he’s trying to drive me crazy. I’m going to go crazy before we even get to the bed,_ and Sansa doesn’t think she’s ever wanted anything more in her life.

When the stairs are behind them Sandor sets her down and sets her free, and she stumbles away from him, walking backwards to the bed as she kicks off her shoes and he does the same. The entire apartment is lit with the low wattage glow from one of those floor lamps, and they walk on the very edge of it, a thin line between light and dark. Her shorts are still undone, and as he follows her he keeps his eyes down where they sag on her hips. Sandor reaches back and tugs his shirt over his head, and he grins to hear her moan when he tosses it to the floor; he may be the one in love, here, but she’s just as greedy for him now as he is for her, and that very thought makes him as hard as her coming for him on the stairs did.

“Leave those for me,” he says when she tries to pull off her own top, and she stops as she stares at him, watching him unbuckle his belt. “I want every last piece of you,” he murmurs when he pushes down and steps out of his jeans. Sandor feels his lip curl with a wicked sort of satisfaction when she lets her gaze lift and drop, when she licks her lips as she stops her backward retreat and lets him approach.

He smiles, slow and thick as he pushes down on her undone shorts, barely contains a moan when he tugs her shirt up and off, leaving her in black panties and a green bra. “Ah ah,” he says when she goes to take her bra. “What did I just tell you,” he murmurs, but now she’s got the devil’s grin on her face when she shrugs, and just like that her bra loosens, and she wriggles her shoulders so the straps slide down her arms, and now it’s another lace bra abandoned to the room.

“Uh oh,” she says, and she bites her lip when he feels his gaze goes dark all over again.

But she’s ready for him now when he storms into her, has her arms flung around his shoulders when he bends down to grab her up again, and now it’s just two pairs of underwear between them when she locks her legs around him.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going,” she says between kisses to his mouth and his throat when he remembers and takes a step back towards the pile of his clothes.

“I have a condom in my wallet,” he says. “From the last time I got tested,” he says.

“I don’t want to hear about other people you’ve been with right now,” she snips, teeth to his shoulder. Fighting through the disbelief that he’s here in her room with her, that he’s fucked her with his fingers and fully intends to fuck her properly now, is the realization that she’s _jealous_ , and oh, how it pleases him, a nice heavy handed stroke to an ego that is rarely tended to.

“I’m clean and I’m good to go,” she says, and he hums with satisfaction when she tells him she’s on the pill. “And you have a promise to keep,” she says, ever hungry, ever greedy to get him again. He’s so hard he could come at the thought, and he squeezes her ass where it sits in his hands.

“Fuck,” he gruffs, turning on his heel, as he holds her tight and snug up against his hard cock, pushing his hips forward when she squirms and rubs against him. “Is that what you want? Tell me what you want, Sansa. Tell me what to do to you,” he says, just before he tosses her down onto her bed.

“You,” she says, crawling backwards away from his advance until the headboard stops her. “I want you inside me,” she says, squealing in terrified delight when he hooks her behind her knee and drags her back down towards him. "I want you to fuck me, Sandor."

“Good,” he says, sliding her out of her panties, pushing his boxers down to the floor.

He’s all rough and tough with his words, with the sharp way he tugs her down to him the same time he climbs up her body, how he grabs her thigh to pull up her leg and push it back around his hip. But he’s also soft lick and slather with the way he kisses up her thighs, the way he’s dreamed about, and he tries to be as gentle as he can when flicks his tongue against the wet of her, drags his beard across her nipples, light enough that she moans for more, tugs his hair into a fist as she pushes his face against her breast. She works a deep low groan out of him when she plays rough right back, and he can’t help the pleading way he says her name when she wraps her fingers around him and tugs, pushes down and tugs, making his hips rock to follow her hand. And then he can’t help himself anymore.

Sandor pushes into her with one slow fluid stroke, as far as he can go because they’re well past teasing each other now, and Sansa flings her head back against the mattress, claws at her covers and arches her back with a cry. She’s a warm, full stretch and give around him, pulled and spread apart in the most tantalizing way, and he grins when she lets slip another moan, a low roll off her tongue that makes him want to suck it into his mouth.

“ _Yes_ ,” he says with a grunt of satisfaction, “that’s what I want to hear,” he says, picking up the pace with the rock of his hips, and he watches her hungrily from where he holds himself up above her, knuckles of his fists to the bed on either side of her. Sansa clings to him with the squeeze of her thighs, grabs him by the forearms, digs her nails into him so hard he hisses. She feels so fucking _good_ , looks like a piece of candy made just for him, naked and unwrapped, and he has to focus in order not to get lost in the way she lifts up for him, squeezes her cunt around his cock when he pulls out, in the way she closes her eyes and smiles as he thrusts into her.

“Don’t go silent on me now,” he says as he lowers down onto his elbows, and he digs his knees into the mattress a moment so he can draw back and thrust harder. “I want to hear you, Sansa,” he says. “I want to hear my little bird sing,” he grunts when he pulls her left arm from around his neck and kisses her wrist. He glances at her when she tips her head to watch as he kisses the little swallow tattooed in black on her skin, and he grins, flicking his tongue against it. _Mine,_ he wants to say, though he has no rights. _Mine_ he wants to say as he fucks her, though it isn’t true. And so he thinks it, over and over as he laces his fingers with hers and presses her hand down against the bed, as he moves with all the skill and precision he has, because if she’s not his little bird then at least he can have a song.

 

Sansa whimpers when he calls her a little bird, sighs out his name when he kisses her tattoo because now it makes sense, and it’s beautiful, this one and only nickname a man has ever given her. The idea that he knows her, the idea that he’s paid attention, and the very _real_ knowledge of how badly he wants her all twist and twine into a thick cord of pleasure inside her, winding into a tight knot right where he's a push and slide, and she squeezes him, biting back her moans and gasps to get a rise out him.

“She wants me to work harder, I think,” he says through the clench of his jaws, and when he pulls out of her that’s when she does cry out, in frustration for the loss of him and all of his beautiful build up. “And I can’t say no to her,” he says, rising up to his knees as he grabs her by the hip and pushes her onto her belly.

“Oh god, please,” she whispers, but when she gets to her hands and knees he presses her back down with a hand to her back, and then Sansa is a delicious, agonizing squeeze between his weight and the mattress.

“I’ll do the work,” he says, kissing her spine, up and up to her shoulder blades as he straddles her thighs and thrusts into her again, filling her up, making her wet. “Let me love you, Sansa. Christ knows I’ve waited long enough for the chance,” he says with a groan when she spreads her legs and lifts her hips to meet him.

“How long,” she gasps, sliding her arms up above her head to grab the edge of the mattress under the pillows. “How long have you loved me, Sandor,” she says, and she closes her eyes as he fills her up and floods her with the start of another orgasm, because to be fucked is one thing, but to be _loved_ and fucked is another.

“Since I met you,” he murmurs against her ear, up on one elbow so she’s not completely crushed and yet still has that possessive press of him that pins her in place, as much for his use as he is for hers. “Since the day I saw you, in your little yellow dress, I, oh Christ,” he says when she whimpers and rocks her hips up into him, over and over again, when she tries her hardest to fuck him and love him back.

“Tell me,” she moans when he slides a hand between her and the covers, his palm a firm squeeze on her breast.

“I love you, Sansa. I’ve loved you and I’ve wanted to make you come for a fucking year and I’m not going to stop until you do,” he says, but his voice is strained and his hips move with less control than before.

“Sandor,” she gasps, eyes flying open as she is about to be swept away again. _This is Sandor loving me, and I’m so full, and it feels so good, and he’s telling me he loves me._ She comes around him, her body a buck against the confinement he’s got her in, and then she’s practically sobbing she’s breathing so hard, two fists to the mattress, her head lifting up so she can say his name. “I’m coming, Sandor, I’m coming, please, don’t stop,” she cries out, voice ragged as the moans roll out of her in time to the slapping way he thrusts into her. _Please don’t ever stop._

“There’s my girl,” Sandor says when he’s got the pulse of her around his cock, and his eyes roll back in his head when she reaches back to grab a fistful of his hair, to hold him in place as he moves faster and faster inside her. “There she is, fuck, Sansa, _yes,_ ” he grits out with a guttural low groan as he comes inside her, pressing his open mouth to her shoulder, tongue a swab on her skin before he nips her hard enough to make her buck again. _Yes, my girl, yes,_ he thinks, clenching his jaw as his orgasm rips right though him and out. _At least for a minute, you were mine, all mine._

“Oh my god,” she pants when he finally stops moving his hips, a slow decline of movement that ends with one final slide.

He hums, hoarse and rough in the back of his throat as he catches his breath, stretches his arm out beside hers before rolling onto his side and taking her with him so they’re spooned up together. She pushes hard against him as she rolls with him but still he slides out of her, and she whimpers, reaching back for his hip to cinch them both closer together.

“Come here,” he says, his hand a collar against her throat as he uses his fingers to tip her face towards the ceiling so he can kiss her, and she’s pliable and tender, loose and limber, all warmed up and slick like silk in his hands.

Sansa stretches her body against his, back to his chest, ass against his cock, legs sliding between his to get tangled, and he soaks up this moment with her here, here where the ebb of their heated fight leaves them completely, where passion will fade and she’ll likely regret everything in the morning.

“That was- Sandor, that was amazing,” she sighs when he drops a kiss to her shoulder, when he slides his hand from her hip, up her belly to knead her breasts, first one and then the other. He hums in agreement, half listening, focusing as he is on memorizing her for the long road after he has to leave her bed. But then she speaks again and he pauses. “Please tell me you’ll stay,” she says. “Please, Sandor, stay.”

He is about to argue, about to protest that it’s not really what she wants, that maybe she’s doing it because he dropped the word _love_ so many times that she feels she has to reciprocate somehow. But she shivers then, the sweat drying and leaving nothing but winter chill in its wake. He sits up, moves her gently to tug down the covers beneath their bodies so they can burrow beneath them, and then he has the huddle of her against him and facing him, her head tucked beneath his chin, her hair a sweat-damp sprawl on the pillow as she snakes an arm over his ribs to drape across his back.

“Of course I’ll stay,” he murmurs against her forehead, hands still a questing roam around her though their urgency has died down to simple exploration, to the simple pleasure of having a body to hold. “I’ll do whatever you want,” he says, closing his eyes against the happy sigh she gusts against his chest, and he wonders what tonight will look like when it’s reflected in her eyes come morning.

 

Tomorrow

Such sweet and lovely dreams: dark and indefinable, hunger and thirst and all the unslaked things that have lived inside her for so long, now all purring contented creatures inside a happy heart. But she wakes with a start when she realizes he’s gone, when she realizes it’s just her in a bed that has never felt so big and empty now that Sandor isn’t in it, anymore.

“No,” she gasps, flipping her hair out of her face as she sits up like a shot. Her apartment is the wan light of winter morning, pale and feeble, nothing like the thick dark of last night, the ripe way it seemed to hold them as they loved each other. _Love,_ she thinks sadly, because he’s gone, because he left her, he said he loved her and then he—

“Did you have a bad dream, Sansa?” he says from the sofa on the farthest end of the room, lifting his head to look up at her.

He’s fully dressed, sitting forward with his forearms braced against his knees, hands clasped in the space between them. _Call me your little bird again,_ she wants to say, though she supposes Sansa is better than boss, after what has happened between them. She draws her knees up to her chest, pulling the covers with her as she wraps her arms around her bent legs.

“The opposite, actually,” she murmurs, resting her cheek on her kneecaps. “Why are you so far away?” She’s starting to hate mornings more than she typically does. Usually they steal sleep she rarely catches up on. Now they’re stealing Sandor.

“I had to let my dogs out,” he sighs, dropping his forehead in his hands. “I tried to stay away but I couldn’t. I had to see you again. Awake, I mean,” he says, sitting back on the sofa. “Before I left again.”

“What? Why? Why would you leave me?” she says, and she thinks of words like _courage_ and _fortitude_ as she tries to keep the mounting panic out of her voice. “Because we just- I mean, come on, Sandor, you were there, you cannot tell me last night didn’t mean anything,” she says. _You said you loved me._

“Of course it meant something. It meant _everything,_ to me. But I’m not an idiot, Sansa, and I’m not so big of an asshole to pretend, either,” he says, hauling himself to his feet with a groan. He’s in his layers of jackets and flannels over his shirt, the ones he must have gone downstairs for, and she fights the tremble of her chin when she realizes just how ready he was to leave her, however many hours ago that he got dressed.

“What are you talking about?”

“I shouldn’t have said anything last night,” he says. “About uh, about my feelings for you. We were in the middle of a huge fight, and you were all worked up, and then I dropped that bomb on you,” he says. “It changed things.”

 _We’re about to have another big fight right now,_ she thinks with a determined huff, and she flings the covers off of her, getting to her feet to storm naked across her apartment.

“Oh no, you do _not_ get to do that,” she says, ignoring him when he says _Jesus, Sansa, you’re gonna freeze to death._ “You don’t get to act like I wasn’t a completely willing partner last night, like I don’t have feelings for you, too. I’ve been- hey, buddy, listen to me,” she says with a snap of her fingers when he’s looking anywhere but at her.

“You’re naked in January without any central heating, you idiot, hold on,” he snaps, pinning her with a stern glare before he leans to the side and snatches a blanket from the back of the other sofa. “Here, bossypants,” he mutters, snapping it open before he drapes it like a cloak around her shoulders.

“Oh,” she says, hackles still raised though she’s somewhat mollified with the way he rubs her arms with his hands to warm her up. “I didn’t realize that’s what you were looking for,” she murmurs.

“You’re welcome,” he says sarcastically, and he’s so wild and wooly, all ferocity and sorrow, ill temper and snark and smirk, and now those other things she knows so well, the dark cherry sweet of him, the high pitch tide of him. Sansa clutches at the blanket, holding it closed at her shoulders, and walks into his chest.

“Sandor, please don’t go. I asked you to stay with me and you said you would. You _said_ you’d do whatever I wanted,” she says with a sniff, turning her head to rest her cheek against him when his arm comes up around her.

“I stayed the night,” he says.

“Yeah, well I meant, you know, _stay._ With me. You said you’re in love with me, but how am I supposed to fall for _you_ if you’re going to walk out of my life? You just showed up. You just got here,” she says with a shiver that makes him hold her closer. _I’ll happily freeze to death if it means you’ll keep me close._

“What are you trying to say, Sansa? Hmm?” he says, craning his neck to look down at her. She tries her brightest smile, though she can feel the desire to beg welling up inside her. _Please, please, please,_ she thinks, because she just wrapped her hands around something precious, and she doesn’t want to lose it so soon, doesn’t want to have to wait another ten years before getting something else she’s wanted for so long.

“I’m asking you to be with me. I’m asking you to give me some time, here, because I want to fall in love with you too. I think I’m on my way. I mean, after last night I am _definitely_ on my way,” she murmurs with a happy shudder, one that makes him chuckle, deep and low and down inside. “And- and I want you to stay with me. I have two days off and I want to spend them with you. I’ll even make you breakfast in bed, Sandor,” she says, putting sugar in her voice as she looks at him. _Please. Please._

He gazes down at her, scars a snarl on one side, face a wrinkle and frown above them as he regards her. It’s a slow tick-tock-tick, here, but she smiles when he sighs and strips off his jacket.

“You don’t know how to cook,” he murmurs, tossing his jacket on the coffee table, knocking nail polish bottles and an empty tea cup to the rug below.

“I’ll figure something out,” she whispers, smiling as he pushes her shoulders with the tips of his index fingers. She takes a step back, and he loses another layer when she does. Another step, another flannel, until he’s back to his t-shirt and jeans and her calves bump the side of her bed. Sandor pushes her shoulders just once more so that she sits down on her bed, shaking his head as he gazes at her.

“No, you won’t. You’re great with QuickBooks, but you’re clueless in the kitchen,” he says, pushing up his sleeves as he looks at her over his shoulder on his way to her refrigerator.

“Guilty as charged,” she grins, scooting so she can tuck herself back in the bed as she watches him look inside her little blue fridge, glance in drawers and cupboards before he pauses in front of her sink.

Sansa sucks in a shaky breath when he runs his fingers along the lace of one of her bras, remembers with a scorch the way he touched her last night as he plucks both of them from the hooks on which they hang. Sandor grins as he turns to toss them on the counter, lifts his eyes to look at her across the room.

 “Luckily for you, little bird, I’m not,” he says.


End file.
